Foreign Minister Penny Wong has ruled out withdrawing Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state, even if the Palestinian Authority fails to keep its promises to reform government.
Asked at a Senate Estimates hearing on Oct. 28 on a possible withdrawal, Wong said, “No, we have recognised the state of Palestine.”
Last year on Aug. 11, 2025, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that recognising Palestine was predicated on “commitments Australia has received from the Palestinian Authority.”
Those five commitments, set out in a joint statement with Wong, were to reform governance, end payments to prisoners, reform schools, disarm, and hold general elections.
Recognition took effect on Sept. 21, 2025, with the Australian government saying further steps, including setting up diplomatic relations and opening embassies, would be considered as the Palestinian Authority made progress on reform.
No Assessment on Governance—DFAT
Senator James Paterson asked DFAT how the Palestinian Authority was tracking against each of the five commitments.
On governance, Ralph King, who heads DFAT’s Middle East and Africa division, initially said the Department had found “significant progress” before saying he needed to come back later with more details.
Acting Deputy Secretary Fiona Webster then pointed to $5 million commitment from Australia through the United Nations between 2024 and 2027 to help the Palestinian Authority improve transparency and prepare for elections.
But Senator Paterson said he was asking what the Authority itself had done, not what Australia paid. He also asked what advice DFAT gave the government at the time about the chances of the commitments being met.
King said he was unaware of any such assessment, while DFAT Secretary Jan Adams said the Department did not canvass the detail of its advice to the minister.
Wong Says Not Realistic to Meet Every Condition
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Wong said reform was a hard and long process and “not a tick-a-box process,” arguing that if the world waited for the Palestinians to meet every condition, the chance of a two-state solution would disappear.
“There is no Palestine left to recognise if we just wait,” she said, adding that the United Kingdom, Canada and France had taken the same view.
Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, Paterson said that no matter how good the intentions, “occasionally we should check the results.”
Prisoner Payments ‘Substantially Delivered’
The Acting Deputy Secretary Webster did point to a July 2026 report by U.S. consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal that found the overhaul of the Palestinian Authority’s payments to prisoners and the families of those killed or wounded had been “substantially delivered.”
The scheme is also called “pay for slay” by some critics.
She said the old laws had been revoked and replaced with a needs-based welfare system, and that Authority President Mahmoud Abbas sacked his finance minister on Nov. 10, 2025, after an internal investigation found he had authorised payments outside the new rules.
Yet the U.S. State Department reached a different conclusion in a report to Congress in April, finding that the Authority kept making payments to Palestinians convicted of terrorism and their families between September 2025 and February 2026, under new arrangements and a different name.
Elections Delayed Again
Turning to elections, Senator Paterson noted that Abbas was “21 years into his four-year term.”
Abbas this month postponed legislative and presidential elections until September 2027.
On Oct. 13, Wong and her counterparts from Canada, France and the United Kingdom said they “deeply regret[ted]” the decision, noting that nearly two decades had passed since the last Palestinian legislative elections.
When Paterson asked how likely it was that elections would ever be held, Wong said, “We’re not in control of what happens in the Middle East. All we can do is establish principled policy parameters that Australia operates within.”
Asked why the Authority would feel any need to deliver on its commitments if recognition could not be withdrawn, Wong said the Palestinian people wanted a state, and that Australia wanted to see the commitments delivered as part of progress towards two states.
